


70 Pine St, New York

by IShouldBeWriting



Series: Perverse Tenacity [3]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Secret Avengers
Genre: Angst, Community: 31_days, Female Character In Command, Gen, Maria Hill Doesn't Care About Your Whining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 02:43:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShouldBeWriting/pseuds/IShouldBeWriting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint feels like brooding after finding out the truth about the brain washing, but Maria Hill is going to have none of that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	70 Pine St, New York

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's 31 Days prompt community for May 2013

Day 1 Prompt: ignoring all the voices from my wall

_I liked it, _Clint thought vehemently. _I liked the way I felt. I liked killing without conscience. I liked relinquishing control; letting someone else not only make the call as to who lives and who dies, but not having to think at all. Follow orders, take the shot. Simple. Easy. No ledger. No red to wipe clean. No guilt.___

__Watching the world go by from his perch on top of an art deco skyscraper at 70 Pine Street, Clint relished the solitude and the space. Too many people made demands of him. And if he was honest with himself, too many of those demands were truly valid ones which he should be attempting to fulfill. Especially when the tiny fragment of humanity he had left inside him clamored soundlessly from inside its cage, insisted on reminding him that he had to at least maintain a pretext of humanity, even if SHIELD's meddling inside his head had finally sloughed off what little remnants of that he’d still possessed._ _

__SHIELD’s psychs said there was no long term damage done, no thread of the brainwashing still residing within his psyche. But then, Clint always had excelled at hiding the worst parts of himself from them. And Natasha was the only one who ever caught him in that lie. And that had been because he let her, wanted her to see. One final test of how far he could trust her as a partner. She’d passed. And Clint still wasn’t sure whether he was relieved to finally have someone who could see what an unremitting bastard he really was and still respect him, or if it bothered him that she of all people wouldn’t call him on it. It wasn’t that he needed someone to act as his conscience. Far from it. But somehow, it disturbed him that she was broken enough in her own right that the ways his head works didn’t phase her at all, didn’t make her want to run._ _

__That was what everyone else did. Or at least, they were certainly doing so now. Because even if psych said that he was in his right mind once again, the other agents couldn’t stop remembering what he’d done to their colleagues, couldn’t entirely forgive him for it even if he hadn’t been in the driver’s seat when it happened. No, the sheep didn’t need to know how much he’d enjoyed it, reveled in that freedom from the moral weight of those actions on his conscience. It’d be better for everyone concerned if they didn’t know those things, nor the fact that the removal of Loki’s control had taken with it what little safety mechanism there had still been on Clint’s conscience._ _

__“I should have expected this but really, Barton? A skyscraper? How cliche of you.” Agent Maria Hill’s voice broke him out of his own thoughts. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the Assistant Director standing in the doorway of the previously locked rooftop access he’d used to get up here. “And by the way, paying for building maintenance to replace the lock on this door will be coming out of your paycheck.”_ _

__“Fine,” Clint replied carelessly._ _

__“Get the hell over yourself, _Hawkeye_ ,” she snapped. “You’re not the only one they experimented on. And a lot of the other people who were are doing more to try to rebuild from it than you are.”_ _

__“Why the fuck should I give a shit... Sir?” he asked, unable to contain his sarcasm and not really caring whether he did or not._ _

__“Watch your language, asshole. And for the record, I could care less whether you turn noble like Thor or not. I don’t give a rat’s ass what your attitude is or whether you care about the little guy or not. What I do care about is whether or not you follow orders. And right now, you are directly disobeying the orders you were given; that being to not cause any additional flagrant destruction of property unless doing so falls within the parameters of being necessary for the completion of your mission. But you’re not _on_ a mission right now. You’re not even assigned to any of the cleanup crews. So no, I don’t give a damn about you and your emo ass. Now get the hell back to the ‘carrier before I report you to Fury and get your ass busted back down to sideshow freak.”_ _

__And with that, she turned on one heel with pin perfect military precision and headed back the way she’d came, letting the steel security door slam behind her._ _

__Clint shook his head. _Okay, so maybe there’s someone besides Nat who doesn’t give a damn about the inside of his head.__ _


End file.
